From an interview with Charlie Munger at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business. For a couple of hours, Munger talks in front of a large audience to Becky Quick of CNBC then takes questions from students and faculty.

Becky began the interview by asking Charlie for his thoughts on the economy.

"Warren and I have not made our way in life by making successful macroeconomic predictions and betting on our conclusions.

Our system is to swim as competently as we can and sometimes the tide will be with us and sometimes it will be against us. But by and large we don't much bother with trying to predict the tides because we plan to play the game for a long time.

I recommend to all of you exactly the same attitude.

It's kind of a snare and a delusion to outguess macroeconomic cycles...very few people do it successfully and some of them do it by accident. When the game is that tough why not adopt the other system of swimming as competently as you can and figuring that over a long life you'll have your share of good tides and bad tides?"